The Nov. 3 blacklisting by the US Commerce Department of the Israeli spyware company NSO took the company heads by surprise. As the announcement was made in Washington, NSO president and founder Shalev Hulio was in the US capital at a series of meetings and was apprised of the decision seconds before meeting with members of Congress.

“We did not get any advance warning, we were not summoned to a hearing, we were not asked about our operations; we simply heard it from reporters and were totally stunned,” one senior company official told Al-Monitor this week on condition of anonymity. According to another version, the Americans did give the company some warning — half an hour.

The NSO Group, developer and producer of the Pegasus spyware, has been the punching bag of human rights groups for years, drawing fire for selling hacking and surveillance software to authoritarian regimes. The US move, citing NSO spyware sales to governments that used the equipment to target officials, dissidents and journalists, has plunged the firm into a crisis.

“Our employees are sought after by all the cyber firms in the world. Once you are blacklisted, your ability to retain workers is considerably reduced,” another company source told Al-Monitor this week on condition of anonymity.